The Seducers | E.V. Day

April 5, 2011

E.V. Day’s three month examination of pruned blooms discovered at Claude Monet’s Giverny, resulted in the exhibition The Seducers. The most arresting specimens were pressed, scanned digitally and then manipulated by taking exactly half the image, and mirroring it, thereby forcing a perfect symmetry upon the natural geometry of each flower.

E.V. Day | The Seducers

“In each of the Seducers, whether a peony, a water lily, or a clematis, I wanted to give the viewer the perspective of an insect hoveringin front of it. And in making it symmetrically perfect—akin to Hermann Rorschach’s ink-blotter tests—I wanted to enhance the almost kaleidoscopic sense of motion I found at the flower’s center. Stand before these images and watch what appears: faces and masks; mammals and insects; religious iconography: altars, angels, Shivas, chalices, mandalas; patterns and forms that suggest baroque and art nouveau. The elegance of the flowers when flattened and scaled up becomes awesome, fleshy and even monstrous. I think of each of the Seducers as a portal into the startling intelligence found in a mindless organism.” – E.V. Day